The promotion of branching in ornamental plants or agricultural plants is preferable because the value of ornamental plants and the yield of agricultural plants can be increased. Therefore, a technique for regulating branching in various plants has been desired.
Maize tbl gene has been known as a gene regulating branching (J. Doebley et al., “Nature” 386, 485–488 (1997)). The gene is a gene functioning to suppress branching. Alternatively, only the zinc finger gene has been reported as a gene promoting branching (H. Takatsuji, “Plant Mol. Biol. (review)” 39, 1073–1078, (1999) and Hiroshi Takatsuji, “Kagaku to Seibutsu”, Vol. 37, pp. 287–289 (1999)).
As described above, promotion of branching serves for elevating the values of ornamental plants or agricultural plants so that these techniques are significant techniques in the field of agriculture and floriculture. However, it cannot be said that these techniques are applicable to all plants, bringing about a great outcome. Hence, another new technique for promoting branching is strongly desired.
Further, the suppression of plant growth to thereby produce a dwarf plant of a short length has been performed frequently. Hence, it has been desired to provide a technique for performing the suppression in a simple manner by using gene manipulation.
Currently, only a number of genes including a gene isolated from the chromosomal DNA of Arabidopsis thaliana have been known as such gene controlling plant dwarfism (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 56382/1997).
The invention has been achieved in the technical state of art as described above. It is a purpose of the invention to provide a technique regulating the branching of plants such as ornamental plants and agricultural plants.